Mass Murder In Cherry Hill? Yes, It Actually Happened!

It was a bright, sunny day in Cherry Hill (NJ). A lovely June day like any other -- the first day of summer, June 21, 1972.
But the day soon turned dark and bloody.
Before it was all over, 12 innocent people were shot and six of them died.
It happened at the Heritage Office Building at 383 Kings Highway at 2:30 pm.
Edwin James Grace (pictured) was the man who committed the crime before he turned a gun on himself during a shooting spree. He died at Cherry Hill Medical Center.
Grace, 33 years old, had been partly paralyzed and unable to talk since he was admitted to the hospital with a bullet lodged at the base of his skull. According to the police, Grace apparently shot himself behind the left ear with one of the two sawed-off .22-caliber rifles he wielded during the attack on office personnel.

Grace directed his rage at an employment agency in the building -- an agency that failed to get him a job earlier in the year.
Grace lived in Brooklyn and worked as a Pinkerton guard. 

Grace was described by his family and friends as a quiet man and an avid reader. William Linn, vice president of the Pinkerton agency, said that Grace had worked off and on for the agency since August, 1971, and had not received a single demerit.
The personnel office was one of those shot up by the gunman during seven minutes of terror for 40 office workers in the two-story building. Reportedly, the gunman walked from one office to the next, shooting and reloading his weapons as he went, waving women workers out of the way and shooting only men.
The police were alerted by a telephone call from one of the wounded men. They quickly surrounded the building, fired tear-gas canisters inside and entered a few minutes later. The shooting had ended by then, and the police did not exchange any shots with the gunman.
Grace was carried out with the dead and wounded, and the police did not realize who he was until they found seven 20-bullet clips in his pocket. The police said that more than 100 bullets had been fired inside the building.

It was a very sad day for Cherry Hill which was then in one of its greatest periods of growth. To this day, many people remember this bloody event.

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